I had a dining room set that I absolutely loved but I was not in love with the cherry stain color. It did not match my home decor style or any other pieces in my home. I have been debating for months whether I should just buy a new table or take on the challenge of refinishing this one and I went with option 2. Refinishing furniture is one thing I absolutely love to do. I love seeing a piece of furniture in its original state and then turning it into a gorgeous show-stopping piece. I knew I wanted my table and chairs to be black and I wanted to refinish the chair pads to give the entire set a new look and it turned out absolutely beautiful! It’s like I got a whole new dining set without breaking the budget.

PREP

The first thing we did to start this diy dining table refresh was prep the table and chairs by removing any gunk from the legs or table top and cleaning with a dust rag to ensure a clean canvas. There were a few spots that had gunk on the legs that we removed with a little spatula. We also made sure there were no loose bolts or anything else before we got started. As you can see in the photo of the table in its original state, it's a beautiful piece of furniture - but the color, not so much!

We got the table ready by placing a drop cloth underneath to protect our wood floors and to ensure an easy clean up area. We unlocked the hinges to remove the leaf and pulled the table as far apart as we could to make sure we could paint everything!

PRIME

We opted to not sand down the entire table because we wanted to make this a one weekend project. We headed to Home Depot and picked up a primer in gray to cover the existing gray color. This worked like a charm to cover up any scratches, nicks and water rings and give us a fresh canvas for painting! We applied the primer with a roller and only used a brush to fill in the grooves on the very top of the table. We applied a total of 2 coats of primer with a drying time of 1 hour in between.

Let's not forget the chairs. We had to prime every single angle of the chairs to make sure we got a clean canvas to paint with. Although this part was a bit time-consuming it was totally worth it!

PAINT

Once the 2nd coat of primer was dried, we were ready to start the transformation, and I couldn’t wait to see how gorgeous the BEHR ULTRA® paint looked on the table. First, we start by using a small brush and filling in all the grooves, then we took our paint roller and rolled the BEHR ULTRA® paint in the color Black on. We chose this black color and it was perfect for us, but Behr offers a variety of other black paint colors and color tools to helps you choose the color that best fits your style.

For painting, we started with the table top, then the legs, then the sides. We painted the chairs. We allowed the first coat to dry for one hour before we went for the second coat.

The coverage was pretty good, but we definitely wanted to do one more coat. At this point I’m loving the matte finish. We added the second coat the same way as the first coat and allowed it to dry overnight.

CHAIR PADS

After painting, the chairs looked amazing but now I wasn’t happy with the leather seats. So, we decided those needed a makeover as well. I grabbed a yard and a half of fabric and that was plenty to recover 6 chair pads. I cut squares 24” x 24” and this was the perfect size! Just flip the pad upside down on the square and pull the fabric tightly starting at the bottom and staple it into place. Repeat with the top and sides.

How amazing do these chair pads look now? We wanted a busy print because let's be realistic — we do have four children in this house!

 The table turned out absolutely BEAUTIFUL! The black matte finish was the perfect choice for our painted dining room table. I can’t wait to host the holidays at our home now so we can show off our refinished dining room table set! We added in an 8x10 rug just to pull the entire dining room together! Doesn’t it look beautiful?

I am so in LOVE with the dining room table set now! I can’t even remember what it looked like before! I added a table runner and some of my favorite candle holders to complete the table! I can’t wait to see what you all think about my dining room table refinish makeover!